Her cheeks heated at his quiet words. “What did you think of the ceremony?” before she remembered he was divorced. “I’m sorry. Forget I asked.”
He shrugged. “We tried. It didn’t work.”
“They’re going to work,” she said with a nod at Adam and Marissa.
“They know what they want,” Lucas said.
She nodded, but the real difference was that they had the courage to go for it. Marissa had been dreaming of the ocean for years before Adam gave her the impetus to live her dream. As a Marine, Adam had seen death up close. Marissa had lost everyone she loved before she was twenty-five years old. Maybe that’s what allowed them to break away and start a new life together, the certainty that death was a heartbeat away.
Watching the wedding, Alana thought that Marissa knew what she wanted. She just didn’t think she could have it. She’d been tied to her past in Walkers Ford, weighted down by over a hundred years of history, while Adam carried a terrible burden of guilt. But while all the people Adam and Marissa were beholden to—Marissa’s father, the boy who died in a motorcycle race with Adam—were dead, Alana’s responsibility was to the living. She couldn’t possibly leave Freddie, or the Wentworth Foundation to work as a public librarian in a small town. Could she?
“You look amazing,” Lucas said softly.
“No different than I normally look,” she said. “The night of the town hall I wanted to get out of my work clothes and put on makeup and a pretty outfit. But I was running late, and you were home early. I missed my chance.”
“Probably for the best,” he said. “If you’d looked any more seductive, I would have ignored Duke and Mitch and the meeting just to get you under me.”
His mild tone didn’t match the sexual promise infusing his words. An electric current raced through her, intense and shocking because his tone had deepened, darkened. He was seducing her.
“You’re blushing again.”
“I’m not.”
His breath drifted against her bare shoulder. “I want to take you to bed.”
“I didn’t mean that as a challenge!”
He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “I want to take you upstairs, and turn off the lights, and watch your skin turn pink as I move inside you. When I’ve kissed you and your skin’s marked by my mouth, you look like a rose in the moonlight. It gets darker when I’m moving inside you, that blood flush.” He turned to look at her, and the demand in his eyes halted her breath in her lungs. “I want that one more night before you leave.”
Her heart stopped in her chest. Lucas Ridgeway hid a poet’s soul under that affectless surface. “Is it too soon?” she whispered, looking around the fire.
“Darla went to bed an hour ago. They’ll be telling stories until the sun comes up.”
She nodded. He took her hand, and they set off across the sand. She caught Marissa’s eye and lifted a hand in farewell. From her position on Adam’s lap, Marissa gave her a smile and a finger wave, then leaned her head back against Adam’s shoulder.
? ? ?
SHE LEFT THE lights off when they reached her room, but opened the curtains and the sliding glass doors to let in the sound of waves lapping at the sand. She walked through the pale swatch of moonlight back to the bed. Lucas’s lips were warm and soft against hers, seeming to memorize the taste and feel of her mouth, letting her do the same. He trailed his mouth down her neck to the juncture of her shoulder, then turned her back to him so he could lower the zipper of her dress. His fingertips skated over her shoulder blades, raising goose bumps and pebbling her nipples as her dress fell to the floor, leaving her in her silk underwear. He unhooked her bra and pushed it off. Her panties slipped from her hips, leaving her bare before him.
She should have felt exposed, standing naked in front of him, but his dark gaze, both reverent and intent, draped her in shadows while she unbuttoned his shirt. Soon he was as bare as she was, reclining on the bed, letting her commit him to memory. She focused on areas where tastes and textures changed, from the scrape of his stubble to the soft skin of his neck, the wiry texture of hair giving way to his hip bones, the taste of sweat rising in the crease of his thigh as he arched and groaned under her hands.
When she smoothed a condom down his shaft and took him inside her, everything changed. Her inner walls softened and stretched to accommodate him, then she bent forward and kissed him. “Lucas,” she whispered. “Lucas.”
“Shh,” he said, and rolled her to her back. Her eyes fluttered closed with the first stroke, but she forced them open, the better to capture every moment, every expression. He drew it out until she ached with desire. “Not yet,” she murmured. “Not yet. A little longer.”